My FT column this week is on the London premiere of Sex and the City and what it, and the show, says about the future of film and television. You can read it here and comment below.

Further to the Eliot Spitzer scandal, I recommend to readers the comment left on my earlier post by Ava Xi’an. It starts as follows:

As a highly-paid escort in New York City, I have to say that I’m completely unsurprised by the events that have unfolded the past few days. I am curious, though, as to how it will affect my industry in the coming few months (the Empire Club was one of the top 5 “VIP” agencies in the tri-state area).

I’m sure a lot of women in this particular sex industry will be keeping very quiet on this issue, so I’d like to take it upon myself to offer at least a few words in our defense.

Miss Xi’an goes on to make some interesting points about the role and legality of escort services and prostitution. You can read her comments here.

Reading the federal complaint against the prostitution ring in which Eliot Spitzer, the New York state governor, apparently became caught up is an insight into how even this sort of business is just that – a business.

The Emperors Club VIP was clearly at the top end of prostitution enterprises. It operated across borders – in Paris and London as well as in US cities – and it was very expensive. Clients had to pay between $1,000 and $5,500 per hour for its services.

Like other service businesses, it had a loyalty club for the most elite clients who paid even more than $5,500 per hour, known as the Icon Club. It allowed some clients to “buy out” their favourite prostitutes, permitting the men direct access to the women without going through the Emperors Club.

The 47-page complaint shows the Emperors Club also faced many operating challenges. The federal wiretaps of conversations show the organisers facing problems such as having too few prostitutes for the demand from clients in one city and having to hassle clients to pay bills.

Of what does the above picture remind you?

No prizes for this one: it looks like a Scrabble board. It is, however, actually a screen print of Scrabulous, the online game popularised on Facebook and created by two brothers in Calcutta. Clearly this is no coincidence but Hasbro and Mattel, the owners of the game, make nothing from Scrabulous because it is not licensed from Scrabble.

As ever in cases of online piracy, which this plainly is, those who favour it claim that they are really doing the brand good because they are providing viral marketing to a younger audience that would not pay for the original.

This argument is one of those cited by Chris Anderson in his forthcoming book (previewed in Wired magazine) which proselytises in favour of companies giving away products – or at least relying on advertising rather than subscriptions.

Personally, I find the argument specious. It may well be that companies should find ways to spread their brands online, and there is a role for free online versions, but the idea that others are justified in co-opting their brands if they do not act rapidly is self-serving and lame.

It was noticeable, watching the Oscars, that there were a lot of foreigners ascending the stage of the Kodak Theatre to accept Academy Awards.

The show started with Alexandra Byrne, the British costume designer, being given a statuette for her work on the costumes for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and culminated in all four of the main actor and actress awards going to Europeans.

The high profile of foreign talent was as striking as the shift towards independent studios and away from big Hollywood studios in the 1990s, led by Miramax.

It strikes me as admirable that Hollywood has demonstrated once again its openness to foreign actors and off-screen talent at a time when there are fears in other US industries about foreign competition and the outsourcing of jobs.

Hollywood has become perhaps the most open industry in its employment patterns apart from Silicon Valley, which draws software engineers from around the world, and Wall Street, where many different nationalities work in investment banks.

I posted yesterday on Barack Obama’s use of the internet for campaigning and fund-raising. It would be remiss not also to mention John McCain’s website, which includes a fun blog from the campaign trail by his daughter Meghan and two of her friends.

Given that 71-year-old Mr McCain is getting stick from the talk show hosts at the moment for looking like a doddering old man, it is rather astute to get his daughter in on the act.

Especially notable is Ms McCain’s taste in music, which she has shared by posting a series of iTunes playlists. I must say that they are jolly good.

The Journal has a piece this morning on the rise of bowling (indoor 10-pin bowling, not the outdoor sort played by Sir Francis Drake). It has become a kind of hipster retro outing for people who enjoy its fake-suburban appeal.

Coincidentally, there is an article in the New York Times pointing out that golf has been in slow decline for some time. Men are apparently finding it harder to justify spending half a day on the golf course (or a Saturday excursion, as Jack Welch used to insist upon for GE executives).

Talking of illusory media revenues, there was some gloom at the Media and Money conference about the chances of hedge funds and other investors being able to make decent returns on equity investments in Hollywood films.

One panel was full of warning noises about the returns that will be made by hedge funds that have rushed to Hollywood in the past two or three years. They have mostly placed money into "slate deals" of up to 25 films packaged by studios for outside investors. I have written sceptically about this before.

Chip Seelig of Dune Capital, which has invested in films produced by Fox Filmed Entertainment, was  pessimistic about many equity investors being able to achieve a 20 per cent equity return, which Dune regards as the hurdle rate.

"There is a constant supply of capital coming to the market that takes sub-optimal returns so I think it will continue to be difficult," he said. In other words, Hollywood still suffers from star-struck investors coming to town and having their money taken from them by old hands.